The creative collaboration of Rice (Chess) and Webber (Phantom of the Opera) has become Broadway legend. Their other famouscollaborations are Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat international stage triumph., but Evita remains their greatest The musical redefined and reinvigorated the stage traditions of both the West End and Broadway, pushing all creative boundaries and setting international boxoffice records as well.
Evita tells the spellbinding story of the ambitious slum prostitute Eva who used sex and charisma to rise to the dizzying heights of wealth and power in 1930s Argentina--keeping an entire nation, indeed a world, beguiled and blinded to the abuses of Juan Peron’s dictatorship. Oliver Stone, the most important and successful political storyteller in modern cinema, is the driving force behind bringing this monumental stage work to the screen. Stone’s work in Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and Natural Born Killers represents the one of the most challenging bodies of work in film history. Stone’s thematic fascination with power, and its corruption of the individuals who wield it, naturally drew him to the story of Juan and Eva Peron. Stone’s version of Evita represents a true landmark in the history of screen adaptation, making the production one of the most talkedabout and controversial event films of the decade. The task of directing Evita falls to the gifted Alan Parker, who is considered one of the guiding geniuses of musical films for his work on Fame, Pink Floyd-The Wall and The Commitments. Perhaps no other director working today can approach Parker for his understanding of the integration of music and story; his stylistic innovations have already set new standards for the art. But Parker is also known for finding moving, important human stories set against political backgrounds. In fact, Parker’s first Oscar nomination was for Midnight Express (his first collaboration with screenwriter Oliver Stone) and his second nomination was for Mississippi Burning, a riveting look at characters caught up in the Civil Rights movement.
The music of Evita is the project’s hallmark - a grandly-conceived score that has been compared with the work of Puccini in the way it reveals the charismatic personality of its title character. Through both its frantically energetic dance numbers, and its hauntingly memorable love ballads (including the famous “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”) the audience is drawn into Evita’s unforgettable story of sex and stardom, of power and privilege. Millions of audience members worldwide have already experienced and embraced Evita, in both its stage version and its chart-busting cast recordings. While these devoted fans will need no further encouragement to see the movie, millions more will be drawn by the extraordinary array of cinematic talent to what is sure to be one of the most provocative and hotly anticipated movies of the ’9Os.
Written by Oliver Stone
Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Directed by Alan Parker